Affaire du Fantôme
by notesinred
Summary: Phantom of the Opera AU; set in the time of le affaire du poisones, skipping in and out of the court of Louis XIV, the "Sun King"...
1. coin in a dusty hat

From the _journal intime_ of Mademoiselle Christine Daae:

_Juin 15, 1675_

_I sat, waited, and watched the pen scratch its way across the page. Scritch. Scritch. Scritch. What was taking so long? I cursed the pen, and by extension the man on the other end of it, with every polite curse I could think of. From now on I have to drop the more expressive ones that the street's taught me; _he_ warned me about that. This was my contract—the damned man had to know how I felt, why was he drawing it out so much?_

_He looked up. Why do I think he had been watching me all along? "Oh, don't let a thought cross that pretty little head of yours, girlie," he laughed, but his voice was rough. The English have no subtlety of language. He pawed over the odious object in question, and I signed where he said me to. 2000 ecus, in advance…All for me. I can't help but be just a bit greedy. That's what happens when one is down on her luck, on the streets of Paris. But I shouldn't be here! Papa was a good violinist, and he supported me, but now he's gone. It seems sordid, detatched and…_cold_ to say it that way, but that's how things have to be now, or that's what I try to say to myself. I don't like singing in the street, papa, I don't! You'd be proud of me now, I know, for getting this. I just know it—our fortune's changed, papa, it's really changed…_

She was on a street corner. He had seen her there before, and always stopped to watch her from behind the gaggle of boys that tossed centimes into her hat—whether they were here for her face or for the pure heaven of sound that poured from her upturned lips, none could say, but he could make a very educated guess. Christine noticed him there, vaguely, because he never left money, but only between songs. When she sang, she appeared to be somewhere else, somewhere that no one else could understand, much less follow. Perhaps that's what these little bourgeoisie butcher's boys and literal sons-of-bitches wanted…

But she didn't care about that. On this day, she simply wanted to know _why_ she was still here, on this same dirty corner, with the same stinking hat, with the same amount of money (nothing, after she paid her rent for the noisome little hole with a bed and desk, two loaves of bread, a sheaf of paper, and a bottle of wine), and why she wasn't somewhere _else_. A little, niggling voice told her that if her papa were alive, she wouldn't have to be here, but she didn't listen to that any more than she had to.

And then the voice. "Is there something…wrong, _mon cher_?" She almost answered before her mouth stopped working with what may have been shock, and her eyes closed tightly, as if before a divine. The voice wrapped itself around her, caressed her skin and slid over her with a silky, dangerous warmth that promised everything and nothing, and sent a little _frisson _of fear and pleasure down her neck, and—"you are not singing well today. As I said, is something the matter?"

"_Non_—_non_—_je pense_—_non monsieur_—" She couldn't will her eyes to open. The voice. Now she felt ashamed; she had displeased it.

"Ah, _bon_; We wouldn't want anything to happen to it. You must concentrate, _mon ange_—" here, previously caressing, it flicked sharp, whiplike, over all the nerves and senses it had brought into sudden, painful awareness—"and think of _nothing_ else in the world, no? Good." She heard the whisper of fabric as he turned to leave, but kept her eyes down. When she finally opened them, in the hat was a single gold ecu.


	2. monseiur?

From the records of Erik_, l'assassin politiques, l'architecte, et le musician_:

_Juillet 21, 1675_

_"Your pitch is perfect; though you knew that—but you have never formally learnt to sing, have you?" She made a little movement that might have been to the contrary, and I felt the faintest bubble of mischief rising inside me. "Ah, non: as I thought." I turned to pace. I can be patient when necessary, but now was not necessary, and I was more restless than I even usually am. "Christine. Have you ever read from the Greek myths? No? Then you will not know of Cupid and Psyche. She was the daughter of a king...it was that one of Cupid's own arrows cut him and drew blood...and he saw her. She was young and lovely, and he took her to be his own. He married her, on the condition that she never look upon his face..."_

_Then came the self doubt, in a crushing wave. I folded myself into the armchair farthest from her. Now I am uneasy. What in Heaven or Hell possessed me to tell her this? I know how the story ends, but she does not. He leaves, and she searches to the ends of the Earth to find him again. What do I think that I am asking of her? Why? I cursed myself a thousand times silently for an utter fool until her little-bird voice cut into my brooding—"Monsieur…?" She looked to continue, but I stopped her. Something is changing in me, and at that moment I was further possessed._

_"No. Call me Erik." Thank God I trusted myself to meet her eyes. "Mademoiselle, we were at "Larmes sur la Rose", no?" She sang it. Why, why, why?_

He came back several times in the weeks following the time he spoke to her, and listened, but each time he left without speaking or leaving anything behind. Each time Christine dared look at no more than the scuffed black of his boots. (She later tried to fathom as much as she could from this, but didn't get very far: his voice and manner insinuated money, and a great deal of it—but why did he dress so differently from most men?) Each time, her breath caught in the back of her throat, and fear and curiosity played havoc with her nerves until she sang.

Finally, on the fifth such time, raw curiosity forced her to raise her eyes to meet his midsong, only to falter with a breath of shock before forcing herself to continue. He wore a mask. Doubtless, this meant nothing; many of the _noblesse_, men and women alike, wore masks when they did not wish to be recognized. But this? Black, and velvet, as to soak up the light? She continued at the glimmer of command in his eyes, now without falter, and he dipped his chin in the barest of nods. This time, he left a scrap of paper with the gold coin in her hat.

Christine stared at it. Who was she to take notes from strange men? And then she remembered the few brief, endless moments when had spoke, and a hot blush swept across her cheeks. With all of the rude suddenness of crows in the dusky, midsummer silence of the hayfields that she had once known, the street boys that clustered about her laughed raucously. She jerked up, wide-eyed. Their lewd comments that did nothing to quiet the crimson that spread now over her ears and down her neck. Where had they come from? Panicked, she stuffed the little piece of parchment into her pocket before they could take it.

Christine found herself the next Sunday picking her way down dirty, unfamiliar boulevards to a place that she had never been before. Unfortunately, this meant the inevitable misstep, and then another, until the only thing to be done was find someone to ask to make all right again. She looked up at the sign above her head—an apothecary's; perhaps not the most respectable, but she didn't care. She had the sinking feeling that—whoever he was—she was going to meet would not appreciate being kept waiting.

Once in the store, Christine was immediately struck by the odor. The metallic, permeating intensity of the smell clawed its way down her throat, and she gasped as her voice seized with the initial shock. All apothecaries' shops seemed to smell oddly, as if they were so full of the feel of magic and arcane knowledge that its aura took form in smell—and like most shops in general, it was dark, but some thing about it seemed sinister in a way beyond the ominous things preserved in jars and lurking in barrels. She began to regret her decision to have ever come here—of all places!—but the woman behind the counter had already seen her. "_Ma petit_, what can I do for you?" the old woman cackled in a more or less friendly way, as she made an admirable attempt to slide on a sympathetic face. Inwardly, Christine winced.

"Er, madame, I have a problem…"

Previously reticent, the woman's face cracked into the broadest of smiles. "That's what we do, _mon joli_! Longueval!" She shouted to the dimness behind the counter. "Assuredly, it won't be a problem much longer. Come, come, come here, and we shall discuss business—" she reached out with a bony hand and clamped down on Christines's arm, not unlike a dog with a bone.

"_Non_!" For the moment, embarrassment, and then disgust, drove out the nervousness that had been bubbling inside her. An _abortionist's_. "Madame, I need directions. I am lost." The woman's face went oddly pale, and she swayed.

"_Oui; oui_. Where do you need to go?" She said, her friendliness suddenly desperate, and she regurgitated the required information as if what she said at this moment could buy her life and happiness in the future. Avoiding her eyes, Christine fled with her hard-won knowledge out into the white, brutal sunlight. She looked back once, to find the woman's eyes still on her. Such places were very, very illegal. There were rumors on the streets of babes procured in such a way, the Black Mass, abortionists in league with poisoners, dead women stacked in alleys. Witches. Safely out in the street, she shuddered almost imperceptibly and continued on, but the metallic burn in her throat remained.

Christine found the house several more missteps and ten streets away. On the paper he had left were only a few words: the address, and a sentence that was both welcome and ominous. "You require training beyond what you have available to you. Be here after the noon bell in one week." All that week Christine had not seen him, and now here she was.

The house was in a modest quarter. It had been very fashionable once, before some rather undesirable neighbors had moved in and made their presence noticeable, and anyone with the money to do so moved out. She stood on the street, and looked at the lodging in question. It was _couleur de chocolat,_ with a red door, brass knockers…utterly charming, and entirely beyond her means. Staring blankly at the little brass angels that twined their way passionately across the door front, she wiped her hands on the front of her skirt, and wished very strongly now that she had something better to wear. "_Fichue pauvreté_," she thought furiously before dropping the little knocker that uncomfortably pierced the amorous celestials.

Shadows threw the face that opened the door into sharp relief. From what she could see beyond the figure before her, the interior seemed alive with moving, writhing shadows. "Mademoiselle Daae, I presume?" The woman's voice cultured, elegant, and surprisingly warm, an almost violent contrast with what she had expected. The woman opened the door and stood aside just enough to let Christine through. She pulled her quickly into an antechamber beside the door.

As her eyes adjusted, Christine caught her breath. The still-imposing figure beside her watched shocked little smile of delight play across the girl's face with the light that pooled and danced through the sepia and emerald green glass arches of the windows; any thoughts of shapes in the shadows were chased from Christine's thoughts with wonder at the delightful things contained in cabinets here—a cunningly carved African monkey, an Araby miniature set with rubies. For the first time, she noticed the softness beneath her that welcomed her weight and depressed in little footprints where she had walked, and awed, she knelt to finger the Persian rug.

The woman cleared her voice with an emotion akin to amusement. "We have no time to make you presentable; that is unfortunate." –Christine blushed, and the man listening almost smiled—"He is waiting. You are a lucky girl; I have never seen him take an interest in anyone like this before. Watch yourself."

"But who—"

"That is not for me to say. If you please him, he may give you a contract to teach you. That English banker of his always likes a big transaction." If it were possible, Christine suddenly felt her eyes go a little bit wider, and the woman softened, almost imperceptibly, the girl was younger than she looked—and gave her a gentler push than she had first intended in the direction of the big staircase.

From the stairs, the gentling puddling green and yellow light from the little room fell away, and from the corner of her eyes the increasing dimness swirled with a life of its own. Looking back, the woman was nowhere to be seen, and Christine irrationally felt herself dropping now to the mercies of the watching dark…Now trembling, she continued up, slower and slower, until she reached the landing. There was a hallway of doors, but the one before her was ajar. She refused to look to either side and whispered, "Monsieur?"

"Ah, _Oui_. Christine." His voice seemed cold with perfect control. After the hallway it was almost too much, and she exhaled very slowly, as if she had just been lowered into ice water, and stepped softly into the room. He stood in the corner, with his hand on a violin. She closed her eyes for just a moment and swallowed. A violin? When he turned, she was not surprised to see he still wore the mask. He was dressed in the style of the provincials, that is to say, far more plainly than is the aristocratic taste, but executed in dark fabric rich enough to make any lady gasp. _His hair and eyes are both black_, she thought stupidly, before he locked eyes with her the barest moment. If she had been in any position to notice, they betrayed a depth of intelligence and interest that would have further unsettled her, but she didn't. He flicked his eyes over her and nodded, barely.

"We really will have to get you some new clothes, won't we, _mon ange_?" He said softly. Christine flushed, and nodded. His voice was too perfect. That was what had her so off balance. No human vocal cords could produce a sound like that, only an angel—or a devil…

He correctly interpreted the sudden flash of fear and fascination in her eyes and suddenly laughed long and low, a warm, intimate, friendly chuckle that suddenly reminded her of picnics in the country, and singing with her papa walking down a dusty road...It was totally disarming and completely familiar, and Christine fought the sudden urge to laugh along with him. His eyes grew dark at her unexpected restraint. He stopped sharply, and grew deadly serious with a blackness that swirled, filled the room completely, and seemed to throb with unspoken displeasure. "You must never be afraid to laugh with me; I will never punish you for it." His voice slowly warmed again to a near semblance of camaraderie as he turned from her, and muscle by muscle, his voice languidly released the tension from her body, until she stood wide-eyed and relaxed before him. "Now...your scales, mademoiselle?"


	3. flowers and mirrors

From the _journal intime _of Christine Daaé, _chanteur populaire_:

_Septembre 17, 1675_

_I'm now set up in the prettiest little suite of rooms…it's an attic floor, but the walls are surprisingly thick; I do not think I will grow cold here, come winter. It certainly isn't particularly stifling, now! Like everything else over the past few weeks, they are far, far beyond anything I expected. The bed—with feathers!—sits below a little recessed, gabled window. It is not the only one, but when I wake, it is through this one that the sun wakes me. A little border of gold-painted suns dances its way across the walls, which are the most delightfully inviting shade of pale yellow. I have no idea what I will need the sitting room for, but it is equally unusually designed and is, of course, completely charming. I have a bureau! Whatever will go in it, I also do not know, but I fully intend to remedy _that_. All of this is never what I would have thought of for myself, but it is perfect. Should I be surprised that he suggested the address to me? No, no…I think not._

_…I had the oddest dream last night, though, and I thought of papa again. I seem to be doing that lately more often than not. First in my dream it was his violin playing for me; it was wild and lilting and playful and spiritual as only papa could ever do it—like when he played for me, just for me, on my birthdays. Then it changed somehow, I don't know when, and it was an angel's voice that sang to me and the violin was gone. What was strangest was how the two meshed to become one in my mind, and now when I try I cannot separate them…_

Twice a week she sang for the masked man on the Rue de D, and twice a week she walked back to her rooms filled with a strange, restless sort of yearning that she could not understand. When she found herself singing whatever song it was she had been practicing last, she never noticed the appreciative glances of those nearby, or how a soft soap-bubble of sound around her seemed to slow and suspend all other sound and movement within it. If she had been stopped at those times, she would have looked at the interloper strangely and hurried on—surely, the monsieur must be mistaken; _she_ had not been singing anything.

A few wizened, toothless old heads nodded their consensus on observing one such occasion from the table where they gossiped and took their cheap wine. Witchcraft, _mes amis_, one spat in merry abandonment. She must be bespelled. A conspiratorial giggle, perhaps induced by lower thresholds for alcoholic consumption than they had once had, rose up from them collectively as they watched her go by. Just after she passed the table, she began to hum again, and a new round of maudlin laughter erupted from the far-from-sober old matrons.

It was several months after Christine had begun lessons that it came to be she stood by the window of her teacher's music room. It was late, and the dark was closing outside; already the candles were lit here, though she could see well enough--Erik always grew angry when she put herself in any danger of permanent harm. Normally she would have been home by now, but increasingly she was coming to prefer his company--and that of Mme Giry and her daughter--over the few people she used to know from the slums. She was nodding off to strange reverie when the voice tugged her back to the moment. Erik had spoken, but between the words and the softness of delivery, Christine was quite sure she had heard him wrong.

She half-swung to face him. "What?"

"I think, _ma cherie_, that you heard me very well."The tilt of his head, the cross of his arms, the set of his shoulders, and the studied ease that he allowed his spine to betray—all spelled mocking boredom. Christine blushed.

"Erik…you have…a position, for me? To sing?" She had no idea how closely he studied the little shadow flickering beneath her eyelashes where they had closed, or exactly how fascinating he found the little flush that rose up to her cheeks against the creamy ivory of her skin. She was so white; he realized with a start, almost deathlike. But no. The moment passed, as blood returned to her face with the blush, and the candlelight infused in her the golden glow of health.

For a moment, he almost distrusted himself to speak, and turned to look out the window. "You will be ready tomorrow, I trust." Those lovely eyes—that soft, clear green, with the purposeful, playful ring of brown, to render fools all those who did not think to look closer to their right hue—raised to his general proximity in astonishment. If it were anyone else, he would have been interminably impatient. As it were, a smile played on the thin lips beneath the velvet mask.

"But, Erik. I will have nothing to _wear_, and…in such grand company. Monsieur, I—I think I shall be frightened. Will you be there?"

He nodded, and his voice was warm; she unwound into it with all the grace of a cat in the sun, and gave a little sigh of gratitude. "Of course I will be there, _ma cherie_." Once again, his mood seemed to shift. It was almost playfully that he picked up his violin and asked her, "Do you feel the air around you?"

Christine's forehead creased into a perplexed little frown. "_Non_…" She couldn't imagine what he meant. Air was air. It was everything, and nothing. It was nowhere, it seemed, but everywhere, and—

"Feel," he breathed. Her eyes closed dutifully. What did he want her to feel? Around him, fact and fantasy seemed to blur, and anything was possible. Air could be more than air, if he said so…Angel feathers, a rustle and near-golden warmth as little rustles swirled suggestively over her skin, and tugged at the hem of her dress. A soft hum emanated and spread from the part of the room where he stood, and it shocked her to realize after a moment that it was sound, and fascinated, she felt the note from the violin quiver, dance, and soar to the highest reaches of its glory before madly plummeting to resonate somewhere in the lower echelons of the D string, finally fading to nothing.

He murmered, "and that is where I am. Anywhere the air can go, as can I, _mi amour_, do you see?"

For the first time, she met his eyes squarely, and grinned in delight. "_Oui_, monsieur Angel. As long as I do not suffocate, you are with me." Who could be so heartless as to refuse to smile at the pure happiness that radiated from her, and laugh along with that waterfall of sound? Certainly not Erik, the man who was her teacher of music.

"Very well then, one-who-the-angel-guards. This old celestial has an answer to the question that plagues you—will you come?"

Christine frowned. "What question? _Je suis désolé_, I don't remember…" A full court bow charmed her assent despite his non-reply, and it was on his arm that she passed through the corridor where the dark shadows threatened and crept. Now, they touched neither of the two walkers, held at bay either by his presence or the glowing happiness that still danced out of her in waves…or both. Down to the end of the hall then, to a room Christine had never noticed before, and a key, opening a heavy door, and into a room with no fire but a brazier in the corner for light.

It was an odd room—all the walls were a warm, delicate shade of orange, with the most fashionable of floral borders painted on the walls in a deeper shade of dusky red-tinged pink. What was odd, though, was what was in it: for each of the four walls, there was a heavy, elegantly tooled mahogany wardrobe, and in each corner was a full-length mirror, angled in such a way that the girl standing in the center could see herself from every angle. It took her a moment to notice that he had hung back in the doorway and was watching her. As she turned to him, he moved forward and came as if to take her hand.

The feel of the room had changed now, and the very air seemed heavy with pregnant expectation as she realized that that moment in the watching corridor was the first time that they had touched—and almost imperceptibly, he shifted and reached past her to the nearest armoire. When he spoke, it came as a command, and his voice was even. "Close your eyes." She did, and waited for his permission to open them. Straining to listen, she almost heard him mutter something that sounded suspiciously like, "what will you wear, Christine?" Smiling a bit, she opened her senses as she had done just a few minutes ago to feel the air again. _The air game,_ Christine thought suddenly and nearly laughed. She felt the rustle and sigh of cloth, the heat from him where he stood, and the ever-present darkness of the corridor. She felt, and waited. At last the command came.

"Open your eyes, Christine Daaé. Now, is this what you had waited for?"

Cream and peach. Carnations. The stomacher was nearly covered with the kind of abstract floral designs she had so envied the rich noblewomen out for day strolls, but this…silk, and the finest. The neckline would sweep low, and leave her breath to sing. She let out an almost involuntary sigh of pure pleasure, and her companion nearly had to turn away. "Erik, it is—perfect, but I can't wear it! Please sir—all this, for me?" Voice trembling, she continued, "all this kindness; it is too much." She tried to drop the whispering pearl-and-gold embroidered heap of cloth back into his arms and fought to stem the tears that pushed to spill, but he stepped back and waved a hand in lazy dismissal.

"No, _ma cherie_. We had agreed you needed new clothes: Here they are. Did you not care for them—or perhaps you wished to explore your dressing room?" Impatience had begun to creep into his voice, but she was still pondering the possibilities of "clothes." He had said "clothes," not "dress." Even Erik was almost surprised at the alacrity with which she dropped the peach confection to fling open the doors of the wardrobe that the gown had come from. In that wardrobe—three more, and shoes, hair ornaments for the dresser to put in, and gloves to match.

They were all of different colors and cuts, but Christine noticed after the initial shock that all worked the motif of a particular flower into the overall design or embellishment. Besides the carnation gown, in the next wardrobe there were three more, and all with flowers: lavender with forget-me-nots; a brilliant red, orange, and yellow court gown with snapdragons worked in tiny glass beads into the sleeves, stomacher, and forepart; one Italian-styled, of all things, yellow and black with poppies surreptitiously animated in the brocade. In the third armoire were two day dresses and one blue gown, with hibiscus. Christine blushed and closed the last wardrobe quickly when she realized that it was filled with undergarments and night things, and that he still watched her.

"What do you think,_ mon ange_?" He seemed to be waiting for something.

"Oh, God, monsieur, thank you. For the time that they are in my care I promise, monsieur, I will treasure them and—"

"That is good, then, as they are yours. The peach is most suited to your debut; understated, yet becoming enough to draw attention to you, where it ought to be, _non_?" Christine felt simmering, tiny bubble-pops of doubt at the use of the word "understated", but well enough. She was in no position to complain. "You will wear that tomorrow. It is late—you had best stay here tonight. The Girys will have you, I am sure. Yes, girl! You will be able to look more closely later, but for now you will rest. Come." He charmed, and cajoled, and manipulated her in the most delightful way to get her out of the orange room and downstairs to the two rooms Mme. Giry and her daughter shared. She was nearly asleep on her feet by the time she was out of the upper corridor, only awake enough to register the quiet murmur of voices as she was discharged, a soft plucking of little hands at the laces of her stays, and then soft, starch-smelling rest.

It was only when she lay, tucked into a sweet, simple room with the light breathing of Giry's daughter, Meg, beside her, that Christine realized belatedly that there were no gowns with roses. She did not hear the slowing of familiar footsteps outside her window before they continued on.

Mornings have vastly different feels to them. Some arrive, full of promise and golden sunlight and dew or laughing rain, to reclaim with mirth the soul of the sleeper from Death's benevolent half-brother. Some come cawing vindictively with the fell crows of dread, and some are a curious and paradoxical mix of the two; this morning was one of these.

Christine woke slowly, and more at the unfamiliarity of her surroundings than the patient ministrations of the day itself. She was to sing tonight. What did that mean for her? Her career? Her tutor? Ought she really be so nervous, and why was she so perturbed by the gift of the room full of dresses? They must have cost a fortune, and all new; gifted to her with a word—and what did her teacher want in return? The court gown perplexed her the most. Like the others, it could only have cost a fortune, but it was rendered unwearable by the (striking) yet unfashionable colors. What person would gift her something that expensive that she could never use?

Questions harried and beat at her like so many mosquitoes as Meg chattered her to the bath. Meg—she was a nice girl, really, and a dancer for some sort of _noblesse_ entertainment or other (Christine politely refrained from asking what _kind _of dancer), and she felt herself slowly relax in the face of the other girl's animated small talk, loosely centered around the troubles and woes of performing girls. After the first shock, she found that she very much enjoyed the hot water and bath salts.

Christine had really never been pampered, and she found the situation more and more enjoyable as Meg took her first to the jeweler's (to have another set of earrings made), to the perfumery's (where the youth winked confidentially at her and murmured something about girls too good for babies, making Christine start with a chill of fear and wonder how close of professional bonds apothecaries and high-end perfumeries _did _keep), and finally to a hairdresser.

It was later that afternoon while Mme Giry was lacing her into her stays that she was still enough to once again fell prickles of apprehension, and Erik's voice was not there to fill her with the quiet peace of the spiritual.The cream dress closed around her, and excited whispers and rustles emanated from its silky folds as Meg began hooking and lacing. Now, when even her gown seemed more excited about the proceedings than she did, she felt sick with fear…especially as, now that the dress in question settled on her, the neckline seemed immodestly low.

She felt him come before she could see him. "_Magnifique_. The color—it is good, _non_? Oh, you have not looked yet. Go on." The very sound of him was a comfort; his voice filled her, to drive out the demons of doubts. She looked in the mirror, and nearly fainted. She Christine Daaé, street singer and violinist's daughter, could pass for…a countess. Or perhaps a lesser nobleman's daughter, at the least, and she did not feel like herself. That was good—Christine could not handle what was she was about to do. This other mirror-girl could. Despite her heightened awareness of him the previous day, she scarcely noticed the man behind her as he moved forward, or the light brush of his fingers against her neck while placing her necklace and threading her earrings through the skin.

She did not notice his tight concentration on her, and the way he did not let his gaze shift once to the mirrors. It was his voice, though, that broke her from her reverie. "_Mon ange_; shall we not try your scales? If there are any…_kinks_, they are best worked out here." (Neither did she notice any slight inflections or deeper meaning to anything he may have said.)

Though Erik steadied her in the last hour before the carriage came, time seemed to gather hopeless, heedless momentum until it was time to leave. Christine turned to comment something inane to the masked figure at her side about the unmarked carriage waiting, but he was gone. Instead stood was Mme Giry. Still scrambling for something to buy a few more seconds, she mumbled, "Where has he got to—where is his room anyway, I haven't seen it"--and turning to the window again—"and aren't those horses fine?"

Giry smiled slightly, and played along with the girl. "Didn't you know? He doesn't live here. Good luck, Christine Daaé…and yes, those are fine horses. I have always preferred grays for a smart carriage team."


End file.
